... to spread the cement of brotherly love and affection, that cement
which unites us into one sacred band or society of brothers, among whom no
contention should ever exist, but that noble emulation of who can best
work or best agree ...

Masonic quotes by Brothers

Masonry
and Magic in the Eighteenth Century

by Bro. Henry
Evans, Litt.DThe Master Mason - June 1927

FREEMASONRY was
carried from England to the Continent during the early part of
the eighteenth century, and there underwent many bizarre
transformations. Upon the three degrees of the Symbolic lodge
were engrafted a multitude of so-called higher degrees, many of
them exemplifying the mystical, hermetic and Rosicrucian
doctrines of the period. Notwithstanding the fact that Elias
Ashmole and other occultists in the seventeenth century joined
the Order in England they left no appreciable impress upon
it.

English Freemasonry in the eighteenth century was
frankly humanitarian and convivial. The degree work was
comparatively insignificant. The passing from labor to
refreshment was quickly accomplished, and the evening spent in
hilarious good fellowship, during which innumerable
churchwardens (the long clay pipes of the period) were smoked,
and many bowls of bishop emptied; songs and glees were sung, and
speeches made.

Hogarth, in his "Night," caricatures the
results of these convivial habits of the brethren. But in France
and Germany the attention of Freemasonry, to a great degree, was
centered on theosophical cults. The English Masons linked up the
Craft with the ancient building guilds; the Continental brethren
attributed the origin of the Order to the Knights Templar, who
went to Palestine to recover the Holy Sepulchre from the
Infidels, and there became indoctrinated with the mysticism of
the East; while others contented that Masonry was derived from
Rosicrucianism. The Fraternity in France and Germany attracted
many educated men, who, having abandoned the dogmas of the
historic church, sought an outlet for their philosophical tenets
in Freemasonry. It was the Chevalier Ramsay, a Scotchman, who,
in 1737, first broached the Templar origin of Masonry, claiming
among other things that the Order was closely connected with the
mysteries of Ceres at Eleusis, Isis in Egypt, and Minerva at
Athens.

IN THE Masonic Rite of Schroeppfer we see one of the
early attempts to link up Masonry with theurgic or magical
practices. Its founder was Johann Georg Schroeppfer, an
ex-hussar, who opened a cafe at Leipsic on October 29, 1768, and
turned it into a Lodge of the Mysteries in 1772 very much on the
order of that established by Cagliostro in France. "He
pretended," says Mackey, in his Masonic Encyclopedia, "that he
had been commissioned by Masonic Superiors to destroy the system
of Strict Observance, whose adherents he abused and openly
insulted. He boasted that he alone possessed the great secret of
Freemasonry."

Little or nothing is known concerning the early
career of this undoubted impostor. He claimed that he was the
natural son of one of the French princes, and assumed the name
of Baron von Steinbach. "His forte," says Gould, in his History
of Freemasonry, "was calling spirits from the vasty deep." After
many vicissitudes of fortune, among them a cudgelling in the
guard-house of Leipsic, by order of the Duke of Courland,
Schroeppfer, on October 8, 1774, gave his last spiritualistic
seance. He invited the brethren to a sumptuous feast, "took a
walk with them in the woods in the cool of the day, stepped
aside and blew out his brains," and so passed from the lesser
mysteries of life to the greater mysteries of death.

The
mystical order established by Martinez de Pasqually next claims
our attention. It was cabalistic and hermetic in its teachings,
and was known as the Rite of Elected Cohens or Priests. It
comprised the following grades: (1) Apprentice, (2) Companion,
(3) Particular Master (corresponding to the three Craft
degrees), (4) Grand Elect Master, (5) Apprentice Cohen, (6)
Companion Cohen, (7) Master Cohen, (8) Grand Master Architect,
and (9) Knight Commander.

Little or nothing is known of
the founder of this Rite, who is said by some writers to have
been a Portuguese Jew, but this is denied by others. According
to Arthur Edward Waite (The Secret Tradition of Freemasonry, vol
2, p. 152) :

PASQUALLY was born somewhere in the parish of
Notre Dame, belonging to the diocese of Grenoble, but the date
is unknown. He is first heard of in the year 1760 at Toulouse.
He carried his strange Rite of Theurgic Priesthood from Toulouse
to Bordeaux, from Bordeaux to Lyons, from Lyons to Paris,
seeking its recognition everywhere at the centers of Grand
Lodges and Chapters.

IT WAS in the year 1768 that Pasqually,
settled in Paris, where he established the Sovereign Tribunal of
the Rite, and attracted considerable attention from lovers of
the mystic and marvelous. Learning that property had been
bequeathed to him in the Island of San Domingo, he hastened
there, and Europe knew him no more. He died in 1779 at
Port-au-Prince.

Pasqually had for his disciple in Paris,
Louis Claude de St. Martin, subsequently known to fame as the
"Unknown Philosopher." St. Martin founded the occult sect known
as Martinists, and was a deep thinker along theosophical lines.
Martinism still survives in France. The late Dr. Encausse
("Papus") was its great exponent. Says Brother Yarker, in his
Arcane Schools, London, 1909 (page 471):

PASQUALLYS work
was theurgic and sought union with Deity, as in oriental
societies. He traced the initiatory circles and the sacred words
himself; and prayed with great humility and fervor in the name
of Christ. Then the superhuman beings appeared in full light to
bless the labors.A PRECURSOR of Cagliostro was Friedrich
Joseph Wilhelm Schroeder, a doctor and professor of
pharmacology, who was born at Bielfeld, Prussia, on March 19,
1733. He devoted himself to chemistry, alchemy and occultism. In
1766, he founded a Chapter of True and Ancient Rose-Croix Masons
at Marburburg.

Says Mackey:

IN 1779, he [Schroeder]
organized in a lodge of Sarreburg a school or Rite, founded on
magic, theosophy, and alchemy, which consisted of seven high
degrees; four high degrees founded on the occult sciences being
superadded to the original three Symbolic degrees. This Rite,
called the "Rectified Rose-Croix," was only practiced by two
lodges under the constitution of the Grand Lodge of Hamburg.
Clavel, in his Histoire Pittoresque (p. 183) calls him the
Cagliostro of Germany, and Oliver terms him an adventurer. But
it is perhaps more just that we should attribute to him a
diseased imagination and misdirected studies than a bad heart or
impure practises.

NEXT comes Cagliostro's Egyptian Rite
of Freemasonry, which was the summum bonum of occultism and
magic in the eighteenth century. Cagliostro! - ah, that is a
name to conjure with. Who was this enigmatic, sphinx-like man
who shone with such "coppery splendor," as Carlyle terms it; and
then faded out in darkness and horror in the dungeons of the
Castle of San Leon, Italy? Perhaps there never was a character
so denounced and vilified as Cagliostro. Was he simply a
notorious charlatan? Did he not have some redeeming traits and
ideals? The matter is worth investigation.

In 1910, a
work was published in London, which analyzes his career in an
impartial manner. It is entitled Cagliostro; the Splendour and
Misery of a Master of Magic, by W.R.H. Trowbridge. The author
has shown very clearly that Cagliostro was not guilty of the
heinous crimes imputed to him by his enemies, but, on the
contrary, was in many respects a badly abused and slandered man.
As all readers of history know, he was mixed up in the Diamond
Necklace trial, which dragged the fair name of the beautiful and
innocent Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, in the mire. But the
necromancer was acquitted, after having been imprisoned for more
than a year in the Bastille. He was afterwards banished from
France by order of Louis XVI, whereupon he took refuge in
England. At the time of the affair of the necklace the French
police did their best to throw light on Cagliostro's past, but
all their efforts were baffled.

It was in September,
1786, that the assertion was first made by the Courrier de
I'Europe, a French newspaper published in London, that he was
Joseph Balsamo, a forger and swindler, who some years before the
advent of Cagliostro in Paris had made a criminal record for
himself in France and other countries, and then had mysteriously
disappeared. The editor of the above-mentioned journal was
Theveneau de Morande, an unscrupulous blackmailer and spy in the
pay of the French Government. His attempts to besmirch the
character of Cagliostro were doubtless instigated by the French
Minister of Police in order to discredit the alchemist in the
eyes of the English public, more especially the Freemasons.
Cagliostro, in his famous Letter to the French People, had
attacked royalty in France in no uncertain terms, and the
pamphlet had been widely circulated in Paris and throughout
France.

THE book published in Rome in 1791, under the
auspices of the Apostolic Chamber, purporting to be a life of
Cagliostro, with an account of his trial by the Holy
Inquisition, also identifies the necromancer with the criminal
Balsamo, but no dates are given. It is special pleading from
start to finish, full of bitter invectives against Masonry, and,
as a biography, unreliable. Upon the articles by Morande and the
so-called biography published by the Inquisition, all subsequent
authors have based their opinions that Cagliostro, the
occultist, was Joseph Balsamo, blackmailer, forger, and
swindler; a man "wanted" by the police of France, Italy, Spain
and England. "But," says Mr. Trowbridge, "there is another
reason for doubting the identity of the two men. It is the most
powerful of all, and has hitherto apparently escaped the
attention of those who have taken this singular theory of
identification for granted. Nobody that had known Balsamo ever
saw Cagliostro." Continues Trowbridge:

AGAIN, one wonders
why nobody who had known Balsamo ever made the least attempt to
identify Cagliostro with him either at the time of the Diamond
Necklace trial or when the articles in the Courrier de l'Europe
brought him a second time prominently before the public. Now
Balsamo was known to have lived in London in 1771, when his
conduct was so suspicious to the police that he deemed it
advisable to leave the country. He and his wife accordingly went
to Paris, and it was here that, in 1773, the events occurred
which brought both prominently under the notice of the
authorities. Six years after Balsamo's disappearance from
London, Count Cagliostro appeared in that city. . . . How is it,
one asks, that the London police, who "wanted" Joseph Balsamo,
utterly failed to recognize him in the notorious
Cagliostro?

AND SO with Cagliostro's identification in Paris.
The Balsamo legend seems to be punctured. But, after all is
said, who was Cagliostro? He admitted that the name was an
alais. Balsamo was devoid of education, and even the appearance
of respectability; grasping, scheming and utterly disreputable.
Count Cagliostro was a highly accomplished man; a chemist of no
mean ability; an empiric, who, made many remarkable cures of
diseases that baffled the medicos of the period; a psychic and a
mesmerizer. He was charitable and generous to a fault, and gave
away immense sums of money to the poor. As Grand Master of the
Egyptian Rite, he was fairly worshipped by his followers. How
could Balsamo have transformed his character so completely from
a common crook to a humanitarian? As Trowbridge pertinently
remarks. "Whoever Cagliostro may have been, he could certainly
never have been Joseph Balsamo." Now let us study the man whose
impenetrable cognomen of Comte de Cagliostro baffled all Europe,
and remains today an unsolved mystery.

In July, 1776, two
foreigners, calling themselves Count and Countess de Cagliostro,
arrived in London and engaged a suite of furnished rooms in
Whitcombe Street, Leicester Fields. They were presumably of
Italian origin, and possessed money and jewels in abundance. The
Count turned one of the rooms he had rented into a chemical
laboratory. It was soon noised about that he was an alchemist
and a Rosicrucian. To please some people he had met he foretold
the lucky numbers in a lottery by alleged cabalistic means.
Refusing to be mixed up any further in such matters, he was
persecuted by a gang of swindlers, and spent some months in the
King's Bench prison on various technical charges.

To
avoid any further trouble-and the evidence is conclusive that he
was the innocent victim of sharpers, who wished to use him as a
tool to obtain money for them by predicting lucky lottery
numbers - he left England. But before doing so it is said that
he was initiated into a Masonic lodge in London. It was known as
Esperance Lodge, No. 369, and was composed mainly of French and
Italian residents in London, holding its sessions at the King's
Head Tavern, Gerard Street. It was attached to the Continental
Masonic Order of the Strict Observance, which was supposed to be
a continuation and perfection of the ancient association of
Knights Templars. The date of the initiation of the famous
psychic was some time in April, 1777.

DEEPLY immersed in
mystical doctrines, Cagliostro determined to found an Egyptian
Rite of Freemasonry upon the first three degrees of the
Fraternity, in which magical practices were to be perpetuated.
According to the Inquisition biographer he borrowed his ideas
for the ritual from an obscure spiritist, George Coston, whose
manuscript he accidentally picked up in a bookshop in London.
But of this there is no evidence.

In his magical seances,
Cagliostro made use of a young boy or young girl in the state of
virgin innocence, to whom power was given over the seven spirits
that surround the throne of the divinity and preside over the
seven planets. The boy or girl would kneel in front of a globe
of clarified water placed upon a table, covered with a black
cloth embroidered with Rosicrucian symbols, and Cagliostro,
making strange mesmeric passes, would summon the angels of the
spheres to enter the globe; whereupon the youthful clairvoyant
would behold the visions presented to his or her view, and often
describe events taking place at a distance.

Many eminent
persons testified to the genuineness of the feats performed.
This is what is called "crystal vision" by students of psychical
research, although the object employed is usually a ball of rock
crystal and not a globe of water, such as Cagliostro used. The
Society for Psychical Research has shown that persons in a state
of partial or complete hypnosis frequently develop clairvoyant
and telepathic powers. The crystal is used to promote hypnosis,
also to visualize the images that appear in the mind.
Undoubtedly Cagliostro was an accomplished mesmerizer. He
possessed remarkable psychic powers which he confessed that he
did not understand. But, like many mediums who have such gifts,
he sometimes resorted (if his enemies are to be believed) to
trickery and sleight-of-hand to accomplish results when the real
power was not forthcoming.

FROM England Cagliostro, went
to The Hague. Throughout Holland he was received by the lodges
with Masonic honors - "arches of steel," etc. He discoursed
learnedly on magic and Masonry to enraptured thousands. He
visited Mitau and St. Petersburg in 1779. In May, 1780, he
turned up at Warsaw, where he "paraded himself in the white
shoes and red heels of a noble." In September, 1780, he arrived
at Strasbourg, where he founded one of his Egyptian
lodges.

He lavished money right and left, cured the poor
without pay, and treated the great with arrogance. The Cardinal
de Rohan invited the sorcerer and his wife to live at the
episcopal palace. Cagliostro presented the cardinal with a
diamond worth 20,000 livres, which he claimed to have made. The
churchman had a laboratory fitted up in the attic of the palace
for the alchemist, where experiments in gold-making were
undertaken. The over-credulous cardinal declared that he saw
Cagliostro transmute baser metals into gold. Spiritualistic
seances were held in the palace, with all the mise-en-scene of a
Faust's studio.

The skeptical Baroness d'Oberkirch, in her
memoirs, declares that while at Strasbourg, Cagliostro predicted
the death of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

N THE
year 1785 we find the famous necromancer at Lyons, France, where
he founded the lodge of Triumphant Wisdom and converted hundreds
to his mystical doctrines. But his greatest triumph was achieved
in Paris. A gay and frivolous aristocracy, mad after new
sensations, welcomed the magician with open arms. The way had
been paved for him by Mesmer and the Count de St. Germain. He
made his debut in the French capital on January 30, 1785. His
mansion in the Rue Saint Claude was always thronged with noble
guests who came to witness the strange s6anccs where ghosts from
"the vasty deep" were summoned. How were these phantoms evoked?
Confederates, concave mirrors, and images cast upon the smoke
arising from burning incense explain the materializations
witnessed in the "Chambre Egyptienne."

But what could not be
explained at the time were the mesmeric and clairvoyant feats of
the necromancer. They not only puzzled the spectators, but
himself as well.

Says Trowbridge:

TO ENHANCE the
effect of his phenomena he had recourse to artifices worthy of a
mountebank. The room in which his s‚ances were held contained
statuettes of Isis, Anubis and the ox Apis. The walls were
covered with hieroglyphics, and two lackeys, clothed like
Egyptian slaves as they are represented on the monuments at
Thebes, were in attendance to arrange the screen behind which
the pupilles or colombes sat, the carafe or mirror into which
they gazed, or to perform any other service that was required.
To complete the mise-en-scene, Cagliostro wore a robe of black
silk on which hieroglyphics were embroidered in red. His head
was covered with an Arab turban of cloth of gold ornamented with
jewels. A chain of emeralds hung en sautoir upon his breast, to
which scarabs and cabalistic symbols of all colors in metal were
attached. A sword with a handle shaped like a cross was
suspended from a belt of red silk.

IT IS claimed that
Cagliostro was the secret agent of the Illuminati; which fact
accounted for the great sums of money he had at his command. He
rarely received fees for his medical services. If the
Inquisition biographer is to be believed, Cagliostro confessed,
at his trial, that he had been initiated into the Illuminati in
an underground cave near Frankfort-on-the-Main. This seems
probable. When the society was suppressed in 1784, Cagliostro
had no need of funds from that source, as he realized large fees
from the Egyptain Rite.

John Yarker, in his Arcane
Schools (Belfast, 1909), says:

THE Rite of Cagliostro was
clearly that of Pasqually, as evidenced by his complete ritual
which has recently been printed in the Paris monthly,
Initiation; it so closely follows the theurgy [of Pasqually]
that it need leave no doubt as to whence Cagliostro derived his
system; and as he stated himself that it was founded on the
manuscript of a George Coston, which he had acquired in London,
it is pretty certain that Pasqually had disciples in the
metropolis.

THE Grand Lodge of Scotland possesses a copy of
the ritual of Egyptian Masonry. Says Kenneth R.H. MacKenzie, in
his Royal Masonic Encyclopedia, the only Masonic work that
endeavors to do justice to Cagliostro:

HAVING acquired
certain knowledge, according to his own statement, from the
various occult students he met with in the East, Count
Cagliostro resolved to communicate the results to persons
properly fitted to receive them. Barruel (Hist. Jac., Vol. III,
p. 8) says that this Egyptian Masonry was introduced into Europe
by a Jutland merchant, about 1771, who had been in Egypt - his
name was said to be Ananiah. He remained some time in Malta,
where Cagliostro may have seen him. His doctrines were those of
Manes. Other statements aver that lie bought certain manuscripts
from one George Coston in London leading up to the idea. However
acquired, upon this basis - like many others - he resoIved to
build. To himself he assigned the post of Grand Kophta, a title
borrowed from that of the high priests of Egypt, and he would
also seem to have been the initiator of his disciples. He
proposed to conduct them to perfection by moral and physical
regeneration. He taught that the Philosopher's Stone was no
fable, and that belief many before and since his time have
shared; and he also promised to his followers to endow them with
the pentagon, which restores man to a state of primitive
innocence, forfeited by Adam at the fall. Egyptian Masonry he
asserted to have been instituted by Enoch and Elias, who taught
its divine mysteries, and he reintroduced adoptive or
androgynous Masonry. The Grand Kophta possessed the power of
commanding the angels; and, in all cases, he was supposed to
accomplish by the miraculous power with which he had been
endowed by Divine power. All religions were tolerated under this
system: a belief in God was the sole qualification, with the
additional necessity of having been regularly initiated into the
three degrees [of Symbolic Masonry]. Three additional degrees
were added, and the initiates, if men, assumed the names of the
ancient prophets, while the women took the names of the ancient
Sybils. . . . In the admission to the Master's degree, great
pomp and ceremony was used, and al though it is undoubted that
this Egyptian system of Masonry was spurious, we nowhere find
the charges of blasphemy, brought against it by the Roman
Catholics, justified.

PERHAPS the best description of the
ritual of Egyptian Rite is that of Arthur Edward Waite, in his
The Secret Traditions of Freemasonry, (Vol. I, p. 136 et seq.).
Brother Waite, who has made a study of the rituals of
Cagliostro, in the possession of the Grand Lodge of Scotland,
and who is well versed in all that appertains to the
arch-enchanter of the eighteenth century, says:

EGYPTIAN
Masonry was . . . conferred upon both sexes - apparently in
separate temples. It was intended to replace the Craft, which
offered a vestige only of the true mystery and a shadow of the
real illumination; but in order to secure the end more certainly,
according to the mind of Cagliostro, the Masonic qualification
was required of his male candidates. . . . The statutes and
regulations of the Royal Lodge of Wisdom Triumphing, being the
Mother Lodge of High Egyptian Masonry for East and West, specify
three grades as comprised by the system. These were Egyptian
Apprentice, Egyptian Companion or Craftsman, and Egyptian
Master. At the end of his experience the candidate is supposed
to have exterminated vice from his nature; to be acquainted with
the True Matter of the Wise, through intercourse with the
Superiors Elect who encompass the throne of the Sublime
Architect of the Universe. These intelligences are seven angels,
who preside over the seven planets, and their names, most of
which are familiar in ceremonial magic, were said to be as
follows: Anael, the angel of the Sun; Michael, the angel of the
Moon; Raphael, who was allocated to Mars, Gabriel, referred to
Mercury; Uriel, the angel of Jupiter; Zobiachel, attributed to
Venus; and Anachiel, the ruler of Saturn.

IN THE grade of
neophyte, the candidate was prepared in a vestibule containing a
representation of the Great Pyramid and the figure of Time
guarding a cavern. He was introduced into the temple in virtue
of his ordinary Masonic titles and as a seeker for the true
Masonry possessed by the wise of Egypt. He knelt before
Cagliostro, who posed as the Grand Copht, founder and Master of
the Rite in all parts of the globe, and the Master . . .
breathed upon him. This took place not only amidst the swinging
of censers but the recital of exorcisms to effect moral
regeneration. He was instructed in seven philosophical
operations: (1) in connection with health and disease in man;
(2) on metals and the medicines thereof; (3) on the use of
occult forces to increase natural heat and that which the
alchemists term the radical humidity of things; (4) on the
liquefaction of the hard; (5) on the congelation of the liquid;
(6) on the mystery of the possible and impossible; and (7) on
the means of doing good with the utmost secrecy.

MORAL
regeneration notwithstanding, the so-called knowledge of the
grade dwelt on the physical side of alchemy, though it was
presumably concerned with the search after God and the
examination of self, all work being undertaken being in view of
the Divine Glory. The other subjects recommended for study
during the period of the noviciate were natural and supernatural
philosophy. Of the second there is no explanation, but natural
philosophy was described as the marriage of the sun and moon and
knowledge of the seven metals.

THE maxim was: Qui
agnoscit martem, rognoscit artem - the significance of which is
dubious. As connected with alchemy, the discourse dwelt upon the
First Matter, which is said to be an unveiled mystery for those
who are elect of God and to be possessed by them. It is
symbolized by the Masonic acacia, while its mercurial part is
denoted by the rough or unhewn stone. It is this which must
suffer the death of philosophical putrefaction and then the
Stone of Philosophy is made therefrom. The Blazing Star
represents Supernatural philosophy and its form is that of a
heptogram, signifying the seven angels about the throne of God,
who are intermediaries between God and man. In correspondence
with the divisions of philosophy, as here stated, the term of
the system was dual, being (1) moral and (2) physical
regeneration, but the word morality must be interpreted rather
widely. Divine aid was necessary to the progress of the
candidate, and he was recommended meditation daily for a space
of three hours.

IN THE case of a Female Apprentice . . . the
Grand Copht said: "I breathe upon you, that the truth which we
possess may penetrate your heart and may germinate therein. So
shall it strengthen your spiritual nature and so confirm you in
the faith of your brothers and sisters. We constitute you a
Daughter of the true Egyptian Adoption, to be recognized as such
by all members of the Rite and to enjoy the same
prerogatives."

There were, at least by the hypothesis, three
years of novicite between the first and second degrees, during
which the candidate was supposed to put in practice the counsels
of his initiation. The ceremony of reception took place in the
presence of twelve Masters, and the presiding officer said: "By
the power which I hold from the Grand Copht, founder of our
Order, and by the grace of God, I confer upon you the Grade of
Companion and constitute you a guardian of the new knowledge
which we communicate in virtue of the sacred names, Helios,
signifying the sun; Mene, which refers to the moon; and
Tetragrammaton." The candidate was made acquainted with further
symbols of the First Matter in the form of bread and wine. He
was given red wine to drink, and this is a clear issue on the
symbolical side, but is confused by the further indication that
Adoniram is also the First Matter and that this must be killed.
There is here a reflection from the system attributed to L.G. de
St. Victor, wherein this name is attributed to the spurious
Master Builder. There are also analogies with the Grades of
Memphis, which therefore drew something from Egyptian Masonry. .
.

IT WAS only in the Grade of Master that the so-called
magical aspects appeared, for it was there that the dove, being
a clairvoyant girl or boy, was shut up in a tabernacle and,
prior to the introduction of the candidate, was interrogated as
to his fitness. This ceremony was performed with great
reverence, beginning with an invocation addressed to God by all
present, who solicited that the power possessed by man before
the Fall might be communicated to the instrument thus chosen as
mediator between the seven planetary spirits and the Chief of
the Lodge. The dove demanded on her, or his part, the grace to
act worthily. The Grand Copht also breathed upon the child. If
the answer was in the affirmative in respect of the candidate,
he was brought into the temple and in the presence of two
Masters, who represented Solomon and the King of Tyre. They sat
upon a single throne, reproducing an arrangement which we have
met with previously. One of them was clothed in white and the
other in blue bordered with gold, while on either side of them
were the names of the seven angels. Twelve other Masters were
present, and these were saluted as the Elect of God.

The
candidate saw also the symbol of a phoenix rising from a bed of
fire. The procedure at his reception owed comparatively little to
the culminating degree of the Craft. He renounced all his past
life and was directed to prostrate himself on the ground with
his face laid against it. Prayers were recited over him; he was
lifted up, created a Master and decorated with the insignia of
the Grade. The dove was finally interrogated to ascertain
whether that which had been done was agreeable to the Divinity.
The obligation of a Master included blind obedience as well as
perfect secrecy. The discourse of the Grade turned again upon
the symbol of the Rose, as representing a further type of the
First Matter. Some additional explanations were given concerning
the two regenerations which I have described as constituting the
term of the system. That which is called moral depended on
prayer and meditation continued for a period of 40 days and
followed by a specific rule. That of the physical kind lasted
for the same time, and it is this which the Cardinal Rohan is
supposed to have undergone, to but without much profit to
himself, at the instance of Cagliostro.

WHEN a woman was made
a Mistress, the acting Mistress, or Chief Officer of the Temple,
represented the Queen of Sheba, and she alone remained erect
during the invocation of the Supreme Being which first took
place. The candidate, lying prostrate on the ground, recited the
Miserere mei; she was then raised up; the dove (clairvoyante)
was consulted; three sisters sang the Veni Creator and burnt
incense about the candidate. The Worshipful Mistress scattered
gold leaf with her breath, and said: Sic transit gloria mundi. A
symbolic draught of immortality was drunk by the new Mistress
before the tabernacle, and the dove prayed that the angels might
consecrate the adornments with which she was about to be
decorated; Moses was also invoked to lay his hands in blessing
on the crown of roses which was placed about her
head.

CAGLIOSTRO'S system of Masonry," remarks Mackenzie,
"was not founded upon shadows. Many of the doctrines he
enunciated may be found in the Book of the Dead and other
important documents of ancient Egypt." The Egyptian Rite must
have contained many exalted ideas - ethical, humanitarian, and
theosophical - otherwise the intense enthusiasm of its initiates
cannot be accounted for. Many eminent men in France were
members of this Order. Cagliostro always insisted on the moral
and religious implications of his system of Masonry.

The
controversy between Cagliostro and the Lodge of Philalethes (or
Lovers of Truth) is an Masonic history. On February 15, 1785,
the members of the Philalethes, with Savalette de Langes at
their head, met in Paris to discuss questions of importance
regarding Freemasonry, such as its origin, essential nature,
relations with the occult sciences, etc. Thory, in his Acta
Latomorum, Vol. II, gives a list of those who composed the
conclave, among them being French and Austrian princes,
councillors, financiers, barons, ambassadors, officers of the
army, doctors, farmers-general, and last but not least two
professors of magic. M. de Langes was a royal banker, who had
been prominent in the old Illuminati.

A SUMMONS had been sent
to Cagliostro to attend the convention, and he had assured the
messenger that he would take part in its deliberations'. But he
changed his mind and demanded that the Philalethes adopt the
constitutions of the Egyptian Rite, burn their archives, and be
initiated into the Mother Lodge at Lyons ("Triumphant Wisdom") ,
intimating that they were not in possession of the true Masonry.
He deigned, as he said, to extend his hand over them, and
consented "to send a ray of light into the darkness of their
temple." The Baron von Gleichen was deputed to see Cagliostro
and ask for more detailed information, and at the same time to
request the presence of the members of the Mother Lodge at the
convention. Renewed correspondence took place, but Cagliostro
would not recede from his position. Finally three delegates from
the Philalethes, among them the Marquis de Marnezia, of Franch
e-Comte, repaired to Lyons, and were initiated into Egyptian
Masonry. In their report to the convention occur the following
significant words: "His [Cagliostro's] doctrine ought to be
regarded as sublime and pure; and without having a perfect
acquaintance with our language, he employs it as did the
prophets of old." The negotiations, however, fell through, and
Cagliostro shook off the Philalethes altogether. Shortly after
the above event came the affair of the Diamond Necklace, and
Cagliostro sought refuge in England. Never again did he set foot
on the soil of la belle France, the scene of his greatest
exploits.

Cagliostro, assisted by a number of his disciples
from Paris and Lyons, endeavored to establish an Egyptian lodge
in London, but the attacks of the Courrier de l'Europe put a
quietus on his attempt. He was continually harrassed by
trumped-up charges preferred by Morande and others. Says
Trowbridge:

THE Freemasons, who had welcomed him to their
lodges with open arms, as the victim of a degenerate and
despicable despotism, influenced by the scathing attacks of
Morande, who was himself a Mason, now gave him the cold
shoulder. At a convivial gathering at the Lodge of Antiquity
which he attended about this time (November 1, 1786) instead of
the sympathy he expected he was so ridiculed by one Brother
Mash, an optician, who gave a burlesque imitation of the Grand
Cophta of Egyptian Masonry as a quack doctor vending a spurious
balsam to cure every malady, that the victim of his ridicule was
compelled to withdraw. The mortification which this incident
occasioned Cagliostro was further intensified by the wide
notoriety that it was given by Gillray in a caricature entitled
"A Masonic Anecdote."

SOME scurrilous verses were appended to
this cartoon.

Cagliostro tried to interest the Swedenborgians
in his system of occultism. With this object in view he
advertised in the Morning Herald, calling upon all true Masons,
in the name of Jehovah, to meet him at O'Reilly's Tavern, in
Great Queen Street, on November 3, 1786, to inaugurate plans for
the building of the New Temple at Jerusalem. But the
Swedenborgians paid no attention to his appeal. "It is a curious
circumstance," says Brother Mackenzie, "that Cagliostro's
manifestoes while in London were issued from the Hercules
Pillars, a tavern still in existence, immediately opposite
Freemason's Hall, in Great Queen Street."

Disgusted with his
treatment by the Freemasons of London, and fearing a debtor's
prison, Cagliostro, fled to the Continent, but he was forbidden
to practice his system of medicine and Masonry in Austria,
Germany, Russia and Spain.

Then unfortunately for himself, he
went to Rome, where Freemasonry was anathema. Cagliostro made a
feeble attempt to found an Egyptian lodge, but was betrayed by
one of its members, a spy in the pay of the Holy Office.
Suddenly, on the evening of December 27, 1789, he and his wife
were arrested by the agents of the Inquisition and imprisoned in
the castle of St. Angelo. His highly prized manuscript of
Egyptian Masonry was seized, together with all his papers and
correspondence.

Among Cagliostro's effects was found a
peculiar seal, upon which were engraved a serpent pierced by an
arrow, and holding an apple in its mouth, and the mysterious
letters, "L.'.P.'.D.," which puzzled the Holy
Office.

Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), the
celebrated French cabalist, in his History of Magic, has the
following to say regarding this seal:

AS EXPLAINED by the
cabalistic letters of the names Acharat and Althotas, it
expresses the chief characteristics of the Great Arcanum and the
Great Work. It is a serpent pierced by an arrow, thus
representing the letter Aleph, an image of the union between
active and passive, spirit and life, will and light. The arrow
is that of the antique Apollo, while the serpent is the python
of fable, the green dragon of Hermetic philosophy. The letter
Aleph represents equilibrated unity. This pantacle is reproduced
under various forms in the talismans of old magic. . . . The
arrow signifies the active principle, will, magical action, the
coagulation of the dissolvent, the fixation of the volatile by
projection and the penetration of earth by fire. The union of
the two is the universal balance, the Great Arcanum, the Great
Work, the equilibrium of Jachin and Boaz. The initials L.P.D.,
which accompany this figure, signify Liberty, Power, Duty, and
also Light, Proportion, Density; Law, Principle and Right. The
Freemasons have changed the order of these initials, and in the
form of L.'.D.'.P.: . they render them as Liberte de Penser,
Liberty of Thought, inscribing these on a symbolical bridge, but
for those who are not initiated they substitute Liberte de
Passer, Liberty of Passage. In the records of the prosecution of
Cagliostro it is said that his examination elicited another
meaning as follows: Lilia destrue pedibus: Trample the lilies
under foot; and in support of this version may be cited a
Masonic medal of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, depicting
a branch of lilies severed by sword, having these words on the
exergue: Talem dabit ultio messem - Revenge shall give this
harvest.

IF IT be true that Cagliostro was a member of
the Illuminati, the mystical letters L.'.P.'.D. have especial
significance, as Levi explains. The fleur de lys was the
heraldic device of the Bourbon kings of France; hence this
trampling upon the lilies alluded to the stamping out of the
French monarchy by the Illuminati, which was an order grafted on
Freemasonry.

According to Alexander Wilder (Notes and
Queries, v. 25, p. 216), the name Cagliostro is made up of
Kalos, beautiful from kas, to burn; and Aster, a star or
sun.

AFTER a long imprisonment and many examinations by the
inquisitors of the Holy Office, Cagliostro was finally condemned
to death as a heretic, sorcerer, and Freemason, on March 21,
1791 ; but Pope Pius VI commuted the sentence to life
imprisonment. At first he underwent his punishment in the castel
of St. Angelo, but was subsequently transferred to the fortress
of San Leon, in the Duchy of Urbino, where he died in 1795. The
Countess de Cagliostro died in a convent at Rome, when she had
been forcibly detained.

THUS ended the career of a
remarkable Man of Mystery, whose career is one of the enigmas of
history. Although classed as a charlatan by most writers,
nevertheless he was a Masonic martyr and deserves some
consideration by the brethren.

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